I’m still fairly new to blender despite the fact that this is the thousandth issue I’ve had to ask about on this wonderful forum…
I didn’t do anything to annoy Blender, but Blender has just decided to kill one of my audio clips in the VSE. All visual waveforms and keyframes are as they should be, and also as they were when everything was working. Nevertheless, Blender refuses to play or mixdown any media from this certain clip. And it’s not like I accidently deleted the external source file because every single clip in this project originated from the same movie file, and everything but this one segment works… I’d really hate to have to manually reload it because of its complex keyframing, but its inevitable.
Update: The Black Death has spread to various other parts of my project, popping up in random places. The audio in one track is fine in one spot and then, at the next frame time it cuts out. I am experiencing a brand new case of this EVERY TIME I MIX DOWN!!! One way of getting rid of it is by duplicating it, but as soon as I turn my back on it the duplicate contracts the same exact thing! Even when I manually delete and reload the strip, it dies again later on. I have an unbreakable deadline in several hours, so
I’ve been experiencing where audio will suddenly not play back. For me restarting Blender solved it. It sounds like what you have is different though, actually damaging your project. It may seem an obvious question to ask, but it’s all I can suggest: have you tried quitting Blender and relaunching?
Just curious, what video format are you working in? What’s your frame rate, audio sample rate, etc? The more specifics you give the more people may be able to help. And definitely file a bug report later.
What version of Blender are you using. Can you try loading the broken project in an older version?
There used to a be a bug with duplicated audio strips having the same keyframe datablock. This would corrupt a project. I have not experienced this lately however.
My past solution was to make the dupe strips unique by adding it again instead of splitting it from another shot. Which sucks.
You might take a look at your clip’s settings and curve automations. I just had a case where I had a clip with no audio coming out. Turns out I had accidentally flatlined the volume to zero while deleting an audio crossfade. facepalm
That’s in addition to the bug with audio playback that I mentioned above, not a solution to it. Still having to restart Blender each time before rendering or my video buzzes like feedback through a guitar amp.
Please note that while audio corruption happens (somethimes), the solution is usually very trivial --such as saving a new version of the project and continuing from there, or reloading the sources etc.
This is why I always use versions (i.e. rough cut 1-n, refinement 1-n etc). If disaster happens then “this is Blendar” so there are multiple ways of resolving the problem. For example, last time an audio strip was misbehaving (i.e. no audio output after cutting the strip) I literally appended it from the previous version and move on from there
I’m pretty sure everybody’s got a bag full of VSE tips n tricks so we just need to pool them
Broken .blend files from bad audio strips should be submitted to bug tracker. Otherwise these problems won’t be solved. In my experience these ones do get addressed promptly, especially if they kill your project.
While I agree that what you say here is the general principle, I’ve never been able to replicate an audio issue thus far.
Like starting from scratch, loading the same video file, and cutting it at roughly the same place to see if the same problem arises.
It never does. If you keep on cutting, and duplicating, and trimming etc then perhaps at some point down the road you might encounter an issue but that’s not necessarily the one.
So IMHO reporting audio bugs of this particular type is impractical --unless of course you find a way to upload the whole project
Otherwise these problems won’t be solved. In my experience these ones do get addressed promptly, especially if they kill your project.
I agree but then again if the error cannot be replicated the devs cannot fix it.
Can you strip the .blend so that only the corrupt audio strip is packed?
Then you need the system details of your PC and os as well as the broken and working blender version. Be as clear as possible about how and why you think the .blend failed.
No, but I wonder if maybe by using an external editor to trim the video down to the part that shows as corrupt within the .blend - if you could then go back to the .blend and replace that clip’s source file with the trimmed version. Of course delete the other clips, or maybe leave one that works in there for comparison. Only a few seconds of footage should be needed. This is assuming that the error won’t resolve itself when the clip source is replaced… but worth a try?
But the plague has decided to go away now. Just opened it, put it through a couple mixdowns, reloaded the .blend, and everything is fine (2.7)
I guess this is just one of those things that are specifically designed to crash your project and then run away when the sirens start wailing, come back when the cops leave, then crash something else, etc.